A MASSIVE clean-up operation is under way to get a cemetery ready for the first public open day in its 170-year-old history.

A graveyard may not seem the ideal venue for a family day out but campaigners see it as a way of raising the profile of Birmingham's oldest and probably most important cemetery.

More than #1 million is needed for vital repairs to Key Hill Cemetery, in the Jewellery Quarter, where some of the city's most famous sons were laid to rest.

"Key Hill encapsulates Birmingham since the Industrial Revolution and it's relevant to everything that the city has become today," said Pauline Roberts, who chairs the Friends of Key Hill Cemetery.

"Birmingham is now promoted for its shops but we seem to ignore that we were once the city of a thousand trades. So many people buried in Key Hill were part of that era. The cemetery was once called the Westminster Abbey of the Midlands."

Graves at the Icknield Street site include those of former Lord Mayor Joseph Chamberlain, John Henderson, who built Crystal Palace, the Suffields, the grandparents of Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien, plus industrialists like Joseph Gillott, John Sheldon and Nathaniel Mills.

It opened in 1836 and is one of the country's oldest cemeteries. It contains 60,000 graves and was closed to burials in the 1980s. However, some family vaults are still used.

The open day is on Saturday, between 10am and 4pm, and will include five guided tours by historian Chris Upton, plus wood carving and beehive demonstrations and information on the cemetery's fascinating history.